Тезисы докладов
P. Ericsson

P. Ericsson
Uppsala University
The Great Northern war in Swedish historiography

More scholarly efforts have been dedicated to the history of the Great Northern War than to any other period in Swedish history. And no historical character is more familiar than that of Charles XII. These facts, however, contains a paradox. The king’s ambiguous person has tended to overshadow the entire era – and in particular the social changes that were caused by the war. In addition to this, a great number of these works were written in the early 20th century and were heavily biased by their author´s nationalistic, conservative and right-wing political convictions.

Historians like Harald Hjärne and military officers like Carl Bennedich thus launched Charles XII as a symbol of national and political unity, in order to buttress their resistance to liberals and socialist and their demands for democracy. H. Hjärne and his followers were recognized as the new school, since they had a thoroughly positive opinion of Charles XII. This in contrast to their 19th century predecessors, who were typically liberals and who held a negative view of the king as a military commander and politician. The latter were accordingly labelled the old school.

A consequence of the politicizing of Charles – and with him the war – is that historians who wanted to appear as politically objective professionals, mainly preoccupied with source-criticism, has eschewed the subject entirely. And since this standpoint has been predominant in the latter half of the 20th century, our knowledge of the period has only to a limited extent been able to benefit from the theoretical and methodological advances of the discipline made during that time.